A Hero's Homecoming
by turbomagnus
Summary: After series, Carter returns home... with a bride. Unfortunately, not everyone is happy for them. Carter/Mady.


Summary: After series, Carter returns home... with a bride. Unfortunately, not everyone is happy for them.

Disclaimer: CBS owns Hogan's Heroes and all associated characters, events and places; I use them without permission or intent to profit.

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"A Hero's Homecoming"  
by J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

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Bullfrog, North Dakota  
United States of America  
1946

Sergeant Andrew Carter, formerly of the U.S. Army Air Corps and now retired, looked out the window of the diner at the town square of Bullfrog, North Dakota.

"Wow, I mean, wow..."

"Something wrong, _Liebchen_?" His wife asked curiously.

"Nothing's wrong, boy, I mean darling," Carter proved some bad habits die hard, "I guess I just expected things to have changed somehow in the last five years. I mean, I did and everything, but Bullfrog hasn't changed at all, it's like stepping back in time."

"It is... _heimelig_... homelike," Mady corrected herself, "Small towns are the same everywhere, I think."

"I know, gosh, if it wasn't for everyone speaking German, Hammelburg could've been any small town here in the States, you know?"

"I am _befangen_... Um... What is the word?"

"Be fanging?" Carter scratched his head, "Boy, I'm really not good with German unless I'm working, Mady, maybe if you finished what you were going to say, I could figure it out?"

"Hammelburg is my hometown, so I can't compare it to other towns."

"Oh, you mean you'd be biased," Carter answered.

"Yes, that is the word, 'biased'," Mady agreed, "I am biased because Hammelburg is my hometown."

"Doesn't everyone feel that way about their hometown, though?" Carter asked innocently.

"I think people feel the same way about their hometowns the world over, yes," his wife nodded with a smile.

Neither of them had noticed several people stop what they were doing to listen in on their conversation, most of them frowning as they did so, one of those people was the diner's owner who walked around the counter and started across the dining room floor.

As the diner's owner walked up to the table, Carter looked up, "Oh, hey, you're just in time. We know what we want to order..."

The owner glared as he interrupted Carter, "Get out."

Carter frowned in confusion, "But we haven't even ordered yet."

"We heard you two talking," he sneered, "And we don't serve her kind here."

Carter's frown deepened, he was used to being refused service because of his Sioux heritage - or as it had been called by some, 'his kind' - but he wasn't sure what kind of problem there was with Mady; after all, she was white and he more expected problems because an 'Indian' was with a white woman than anyone having a problem with Mady herself. Then it occurred to him that the diner's owner had said he had heard them talking, and even though she spoke English - better than he did, sometimes - she had used her native German more than a few times during the conversation.

"You know the war's over, right?" Carter asked with a good-natured grin on his face.

"I don't care," the owner snapped, "Now get out of my diner before I call the cops to have them get you out."

Mady reached out and put her hand on her husband's, "We'll just leave, _Liebchen,_ let them have it."

Carter took a slow breath, "Whatever you say, darling."

Pulling his hand away from her's, Carter stood up and pushed his chair back under the table. With an annoyed look at the owner, he walked around the table to help Mady up. The former Sergeant was even more annoyed that the man saw fit to follow them to the door to make sure that they were leaving.

Out the door, Carter put his hand on the small of Mady's back as they started across the street, "We'll just go to see my family a little earlier than we'd planned, what do you think?"

Mady nodded and leaned her head against his shoulder in response, neither of them seeing what happened behind them.

"Damn Kraut-lover," the diner's owner spat the words after them, followed by physically spitting in the road behind them.

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Originally, the couple had planned to have a small lunch in town before going to visit Carter's family, but the events at the diner had changed their schedule... and unfortunately served as a prelude to worse events. When they arrived at his grandfather's house, Carter's grandfather wasn't there, only his cousin who also lived there. After what had happened in town, Carter had gone in by himself at first, only to find that the warm welcome which he was expecting was instead replaced with a chilly reception.

"Why are you acting like this, Angry Rabbit?" Carter demanded, addressing his cousin by the diminuative form of his Sioux name 'Angry Rabbit With Thorn In Cottontail' as was traditional at their grandfather's house, "You haven't even met Mady!"

His cousin slowly shook his head, disappointed that war had appearantly not made 'Little Deer Who Runs Swift And Sure Through Forest' grow up, "I have no desire to meet this bride of yours, Little Deer. Had the Germans not been stopped, is it that hard to see that our people would have become their targets as well?"

"Hey," Andrew got defensive, "That wasn't the Germans, that was the Nazis - there's a difference, you know, a lot of Germans were on our side fighting and dying against Hitler and his kind. That's like the white man saying that all of our people and other tribes were nothing but savages just because of the way some acted. That's not right. Really, it's not right at all."

"The goodness in your heart blinds you to the darkness in the hearts of others, cousin... leave this place," Angry Rabbit told him.

"Fine! Boy, if you can't expect family to be happy for you, then who can you?" Carter complained as he shook his head and stormed out of the house.

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-o0o-

A few miles down the road, Carter pulled the rental car to the side of the road and his head dropped until his forehead hit the steering wheel.

"Boy," Carter sighed, "I guess it's true, you really can't go home again, can you? I mean, you can go home again, because this is where home is, but it doesn't feel like home anymore... So, I guess it's not really going home again, then."

Mady reached out and started rubbing her husband's back between his shoulder blades. She had met his comrades from the war and of all of them, he was perhaps the most idealistic, and unfortunately also prone to not taking it well when his expectations of people being honest and good went unmet.

"I'm sorry," Carter finally said softly as he straighten back up in his seat, "I didn't want you to see this; I never thought I'd see this either. It must look like when Hitler started blaming the Jews for everything to you, the way we've been treated since we got here. I can't ask you to live here or be treated like this. Boy, I don't even know if I can live here if they're going to treat people like this..."

"Then where will we go?" Mady asked.

"Well, gee," Carter thought for a moment, "I don't know; It's not like I have a lot of other friends, I mean, except for the war and a few years in Muncie, Indiana, I lived in Bullfrog all my life."

"What about your friends from Stalag 13?"

"Aw, the Colonel's still in Germany, chasing Nazis with Tiger - I mean Marie, and last thing I heard, Kinch was in Africa or something," Carter shook his head.

"Why do we not visit London or Paris, you have other friends, the Frenchman and Newkirk, the Englander?"

"Louis and Newkirk, oh, sure, I just don't know where they are, it's been a mess, you know, cleaning up after the war and everything. Well, gee, I guess that really leaves only one place for us to go, doesn't it?"

" _Und_ where is that?"

Carter smiled sheepishly, "What do you think of Germany? I kinda remember this nice little town called Hammelburg, you know..."


End file.
